How Donald Trump’s brutal childhood jabs shattered brother Freddy’s confidence and fueled his tragic downfall at 42

Donald Trump’s insults to his older brother as a child undermined his self-confidence and set him on a path that led to his untimely death at age 42 after a lifetime of drinking, a new book by the former president’s niece claims.

Mary Trump writes that her father Freddy, Donald’s brother, was “deeply ashamed” because he did not live up to his family’s expectations.

She claims that Donald used to ridicule Freddy, who quit the family’s real estate business to pursue a career as a pilot, and that their father was “ashamed” of him.

In “Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir,” Mary writes that Donald told her father he was a “glorified bus driver” during one of the many fits that drove Freddy to alcohol abuse, which led to his death in 1981.

The Republican presidential candidate is portrayed in the upcoming book as a “failure” and a “vulnerable bully” who beat up smaller children as a boy.

Mary is also relentless in her criticism of her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr., who founded the Trump Organization, calling him a “sociopath” who is “incapable of loving anyone.”

Fred also insulted Freddy, saying he was a “fucking air driver.”

It is Mary’s second book about her family, following her 2020 bestseller, Too Much and Never Enough, in which she alleged that Donald was the victim of “child abuse” at the hands of his neglectful father.

Freddy was Trump’s eldest son and would become Fred’s successor and run the Trump family’s real estate company.

But he turned down the offer and, “to escape his father’s suffocating control and general disapproval,” Mary writes, he applied to TWA Airlines and was accepted into pilot training in 1964.

After graduating, Freddy was assigned to the Boston to Los Angeles route, but four months later.

Mary writes, “Although Freddy could fly a 160-ton plane and protect all 180 passengers, he could not handle the pressure his father put on him to return to Trump Management (the family real estate business).”

According to the book, Fred told Freddy that he was a “fucking air driver.”

Donald would say to Freddy, ‘Daddy is ashamed of you. He tells everyone you’re a glorified bus driver.’

Mary writes: ‘His family’s ridicule’ caused Freddy to start drinking.

She writes: ‘The deep shame he felt for trying so hard to make his dream come true, for not being able to live up to his father’s expectations, meant that he could not confide in his wife and was left to face it alone.’

Donald’s ‘increasingly cruel side’ and his father’s embrace only made matters worse.

While Freddy was financially “frozen,” Donald was given as much money as he wanted, with perks like a car, college credits for work he didn’t do, and a chauffeur.

In 1970, 24-year-old Donald was already president of Trump, which meant that Freddy no longer had a chance to advance within the company. He was no longer interested in that anyway.

“Freddy could literally do nothing to change his father’s feelings for him,” Mary writes.

Mary says the ‘problems with Donald’ started when he was a boy and he ‘bullied’ his little brother Robert and had ‘nothing but contempt for everyone’.

This was especially true of his mother, Mary claims.

Children in their Queens, New York, neighborhood saw Donald as a “bully with a sensitive skin” who beat up younger kids but would run home in a rage if anyone spoke out against him.

Mary, who now works as a therapist, writes: ‘When Donald was growing up, no one liked him, not even his parents.

‘As he grew older, these traits hardened, as did the hostile indifference and aggressive disrespect he had developed as a toddler to resist neglect by his mother, because she was seriously ill and mentally unstable, and by his father because he, as a sociopath, had no interest in his children beyond Freddy.

‘Yet the interest was not focused on love – Fred (Sr.) was incapable of loving anyone’.

According to Mary, both her father and Donald were “failures,” but for different reasons.

Donald failed because he “lacked the skills necessary to succeed on his own,” Mary writes.

Everything Freddy did was a ‘personal insult’ to Fred and that’s why his eldest son ‘rejected’ him.

Not that Fred really cared about Donald.

He “cared about Donald only to the extent that he could use him,” Mary writes.

She writes: “He needed someone with Donald’s oblivious bravado, lack of self-reflection, and shameless ignorance of his shortcomings to be his avatar of success in a world outside the unglamorous and provincial boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. Donald played his part to perfection.”

Mary says the Trump family loves litigation so much that litigation is their “love language.”

That was also true for her when Donald sued her for $100 million for helping New York Times journalists publish information about his personal finances, including his taxes.

The lawsuit alleged that it was a “devious scheme to obtain confidential and highly sensitive information, which they would misuse to their own advantage and use as a means to falsely legitimize their published works.”

In May, a New York appeals court ruled that the case could proceed.

One of the other legal battles that divided the Trump family was the lawsuit filed in 2000 in a New York court, when Mary and her brother Fred III objected to an attempt by Donald and his siblings to cut them out of the family inheritance.

In retaliation, Fred III was informed that Trump’s health insurance would be terminated for him and his family.

This included coverage for his infant son William, whose severe disabilities required 24-hour care and cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

In his own memoirs, released last month, Fred III called Donald “evil” for setting up the plan, saying Fred was mentally retarded when he agreed to it.

In April 2017, a reunion of sorts with her family occurred when she accepted an invitation to visit Donald at the White House when he was president.

But she regretted it from the moment she accepted the offer, she writes, adding that, in conjunction with the Trump administration’s policies, she had to undergo ketamine therapy.

Mary also underwent EMDR therapy, which involves moving your eyelids in a certain way to heal trauma. This therapy was popularized by Prince Harry, who did it for his Apple TV show.